Socialist Realism Quotes

“Writers are the engineers of the human souls”
― Joseph Stalin

“To a friend, in an unguarded moment, he [Maxim Gorky, 1932] declared his ambition: simply to portray the world and man as they were, without the myth of love, ‘repudiating noting, praising nothing’; repudiation was unjust, while praise was premature—‘for we live in chaos and ourselves are fragments of chaos.’ He compared his desire with Einstein, ‘trying to alter radically our representation of the universe.”
― Dan Levin, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky

“ 'A fine story', said Asterinov ....
'Six months in prison, that tale,' said Sergei.
'Was it the witch?', I asked 'I never know where the Party stands on issues of the supernatural...'
.....
'It was, - understand, I do not know for sure, I heard this at second or third hand - it was the walk through the forest. Apparently I was just too convincing in the representation of a poor man's yearning for money...' ”
― Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia

“Я пытался писать обыкновенный роман по методу социалистического реализма — единственному, который я знал, которому учили со школьной парты и далее всю жизнь. Но правда жизни, превращаясь в «правду художественную», почему-то на глазах тускнела, становилась банальной, гладенькой, лживой и, наконец, подлой.

Социалистический реализм обязывает писать не столько так, как было, сколько так, как это должно было быть, или, во всяком случае, могло быть. Ложный и лицемерный этот и метод, собственно, и загубил великую в прошлом русскую литературу. Я отказываюсь от него навсегда [11—12].”
― Анатолий Кузнецов, Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel

“Like many compositions of its kind - all muscles, square jaws and sunshine - it is stronger on the socialism than the reality”
― Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

“To a friend, in an unguarded moment, he [Maxim Gorky, 1932] declared his ambition: simply to portray the world and man as they were, without the myth of love, ‘repudiating nothing, praising nothing’; repudiation was unjust, while praise was premature—‘for we live in chaos and ourselves are fragments of chaos.’ He compared his desire with Einstein, ‘trying to alter radically our representation of the universe.”
― Dan Levin, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky

“The truthfulness and historical exactitude of the artistic image must be linked with the task of ideological transformation, of the education of the working people in the spirit of socialism. This method in fiction and literary criticism is what we call the method of socialist realism.”
― Andrei Zhdanov, On Literature, Music and Philosophy